Typically, at a subscription merchant website, the customer selects the subscription, pays for it and selects or receives a password to access the service. The subscription service may be for a trial period with trial rates or for a longer period, for example, with periodic payments such as monthly or every three months. Examples of such subscription service merchants are those having business intelligence data making available to other businesses, adult sites making mature content available to customers, and online magazines and newspapers, making value added news available to business and consumers.
While making payment for such a subscription service, the customer gives his/her name, credit card number to the merchant along with other data such as e-mail address, so that the merchant can process the payment for initial payment and for subsequent periodic payments and notify the customer via the e-mail address.
The customer sensitive data resides in the merchant computer system, sometimes becoming permanently saved data, even after the customer has ceased to be the subscription customer. The sensitive data is subject to theft by hacking as well as subject to misuse in being shared or sold to other businesses. Theft by hacking and misuse of data are common occurrences based on many published news stories.
In light of the above, it is an objective of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method that facilitates receiving an online subscription service without providing sensitive information to the merchant and merchant employees.
Yet another objective is to remove from the merchant the responsibility and liability of safeguarding sensitive data of others.